Haggis

ARTICLES ABOUT HAGGIS BY DATE - PAGE 5

The Robbie Burns Irregulars held their 5th annual stag dinner last Saturday honoring the Scottish poet, whose words are familiar, if occasionally puzzling, to many Americans, especially to those who on New Year's Eve warble "Auld Lang Syne," perhaps Burns` best-known effort. The Burns Irregulars, founded by local publicist William Currie, meet on or near Jan. 25, Burns` birthday. This year's affair challenged the Drake Hotel to come up with courses that the late bard might recognize.

Burns Night is a celebration of the best things Scottish-Robert Burns` birthday, the haggis and Scotch whiskey. And by no means necessarily in that order. You do not have to be a Scot to join in. Nor do you have to live in Scotland. Burns Night is celebrated worldwide and increasingly in the home, where some people even attempt to make their own haggis, a traditional if unappetizing Scottish dish made from the lungs, heart and innards of a sheep or calf, seasonings, and oatmeal and cooked in the animal's stomach.

No one who's ever tried the organ pudding known as haggis would believe something tasty could have come out of Scotland's kitchens. But the Scots are also behind one of Chicago's latest fun foods. The same people who came up with the idea of mixing the heart, lungs, etc., of a sheep or calf with suet and oatmeal and boiling it all in the animal's stomach are responsible for scones. The two dishes couldn`t be more dissimilar. One is the not-too-sweet sweet of the moment at coffeehouses across the city.

`Here's to the Haggis, an elusive bonnie beastie." It all started because they did "Brigadoon" last summer on beautiful Mt. Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco. It's a little mountain as mountains go, but it has a big 5,000-seat amphitheater high up on its side overlooking the Bay Area. They`re not seats really, just rocks. Row upon row of huge flat rocks like a giant staircase up the side of Mt. Tam. They perform a play on the mountain each year-most often in recent years, a musical.

Robbie Burns and his Scottish soul would be proud. In honor of the 231st anniversary of his birth Jan. 25, hundreds of admirers from Du Page County and environs will gather at various Burns dinners this week to toast the bard whom Scots revere as their poet laureate. The bagpipes will drone, the Highland dancers will dazzle with their aerobic art, and haggis, a pudding made of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep or calf minced with suet, onions and oatmeal, will make a brief appearance before the main course arrives to save the faint of heart.

As Bill Currie might be the first to agree, The best-laid schemes o` mice an` men gang aft agley. . . But Currie isn`t timorous about promising a joyful evening for guests at his annual Robert Burns Birthday Supper on Jan. 25, even if the $50-a-plate stag party does feature poetry recitations and such Scottish gustatory indelicacies as haggis, atholl brose and tripe ala mode. For four years, Currie, an ex-newspaper reporter and itinerant bagpiper who claims a distant and possibly illegitimate kinship to the Scottish poet (1759-96)

Services for Angus MacDonald, 81, a retired executive of Quaker Oats Co. and organizer of Scottish festivals in the Chicago area, will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday in Winnetka Congregational Church, 725 Pine St., in the suburb. He died Monday in his Winnetka home. A graduate of Yale University, Mr. MacDonald served as a lieutenant commander on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier during World War II, then joined Quaker Oats at its Peterborough, Ontario, plant as a mechanical worker.

Poor haggis. No other national dish has been so badly maligned. The Scottish delicacy, traditionally made from sheep's stomach and boiled oatmeal, has been the butt of jokes for so many years that some people still aren`t sure whether it's a food or a mythical creature. Tall tales have been told about wild haggis-hunting expeditions in the mountains of Scotland, and Scots poet Robert Burns even dedicated an ode to it. But there are few among us who have dared to try it. Fear not. Haggis watchers will get the chance to become haggis eaters at the 143d annual Feast of the Haggis, presented by the Illinois St. Andrew Society at the Conrad Hilton and Towers this weekend in honor of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.

On the 3d floor of the elegant Wrigley Mansion one recent chilly November eve, Evan Cattenach, in tartan kilt and naked nubby knees, called out, "Great chieftain of the puddin` race," then pulled a dagger from his knee-high socks and plunged it with great ferocity into the quivering mass of minced innards. Frenetically sawing away at the lump and occasionally poking with stabs, Cattenach continued his salute to slain sheep, waxing dramatic with line after line of Robert Burns` Gaelic address, "To a Haggis."